Wife Pleads Guilty In Plot To Kill Husband, Spared Jail

Sonya Walker had been married about two years when she hired a stranger she met through a personal ad to kill her husband.

The stranger turned out to be a Fort Lauderdale police detective. And Walker on Monday pleaded guilty to soliciting for first-degree murder.

Walker`s husband, Scott, helped pay her attorney`s fees and spoke in support of his wife during the hearing before Broward Circuit Judge Leroy Moe.

Walker, 19, will serve two years in community control, a program that will allow her to serve the sentence at the couple`s home in Oakland Park. She also is required to continue psychiatric counseling.

State sentencing guidelines list a minimum penalty of seven years in prison for hiring a killer, said Michael Gora, Walker`s attorney.

``I`m happy the court had enough understanding to treat her as an individual,`` Gora said.

Moe asked Scott Walker what he thought of the community control sentence.

Sonya Walker was arrested in May after a letter she wrote in response to a personal ad was taken to police. The letter was an answer to an ad seeking female companionship.

Walker wrote that she was interested in the ad but that she had a problem: She was married to a man who had wrecked her life. Her letter said that the only way out of it was for her to become a ``widow,`` according to court records.

Tom Reynolds had taken out the ad. But Frank McKinney, who shared the post office box with Reynolds, opened the letter accidentally. McKinney turned the letter over to the police.

Detective Al Smith called the number listed in the letter and arranged to meet Walker the next day at a Howard Johnson`s restaurant at Federal Highway and Commercial Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale.

``I asked her how I could help her and she stated she wanted to get rid of her husband,`` Smith wrote in his report. ``I told her that it would be necessary to kill him, and she stated that she knew that and that was what she wanted.``

Walker suggested that Smith break into the couple`s apartment and wait for her husband to arrive. She agreed to pay about $5,000 and wrote Smith a $100 check on the couple`s personal account so he could buy a gun.

``I told her by Saturday she would be single,`` Smith stated.

Walker was arrested after meeting Smith a second time and giving him a photo of her husband.

On Monday, Walker cried softly and wiped away tears as she stood before Moe and listened to the charges against her. Her mother, father, mother-in-law and husband watched quietly.

Gora said his client`s family has been supportive. Walker has been living with her husband since shortly after her arrest, Gora said.

He said his client was ``temporarily not herself`` when she wrote the letter and met the detective.

``She had a lot of job pressures and reacted in a peculiar fashion,`` Gora said.